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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Protagoras by Plato: many who know what is best, act contrary to their knowledge under the
influence of pleasure. But this opposition of good and evil is really the
opposition of a greater or lesser amount of pleasure. Pleasures are evils
because they end in pain, and pains are goods because they end in
pleasures. Thus pleasure is seen to be the only good; and the only evil is
the preference of the lesser pleasure to the greater. But then comes in
the illusion of distance. Some art of mensuration is required in order to
show us pleasures and pains in their true proportion. This art of
mensuration is a kind of knowledge, and knowledge is thus proved once more
to be the governing principle of human life, and ignorance the origin of
all evil: for no one prefers the less pleasure to the greater, or the
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